About

Write Your Name In X is a social game in which various nonsense sounds from different languages are associated with letters in the alphabet. Users are encouraged to spell their names using the sounds, generating a nonsense word which may or may not sound like the target language. Often, the charts depicting the sounds and alphabet letters are accompanied by absurdly stereotypical images of a culture.

Origin

Early versions of the social game involving Japanese circulated on Facebook and other platforms as early as 2018. These games often used different sets of sounds and were inconsistent.^[1] Many sites that earnestly helped people learn Japanese offered a similar kind of activity, although the charts were less simplistic.

On March 18th, 2018, Facebook page Sadcasm Memes posted a version of a chart for spelling out a name in Japanese using Roman alphabet letters, earning almost 250 likes over five years (seen below).^[2]

On January 25th, 2023 Twitter user @Dxxnly posted a version of a Japanese alphabet "write your name" chart with a watermark from Sadcasm, which used the same sounds but did not look exactly like the previous Sadcasm meme (seen below).^[3] This post received over 10,200 likes, hundreds of replies, and was repeatedly quote-tweeted by other users making the same kind of chart for different languages.

Spread

By January 28th, 2023, users on Twitter were creating new charts combining stereotypical images from certain cultures and nonsense sounds in foreign languages. Often, these new memes quote-tweeted the original @Dxxnly post of the Sadcasm Japanese "Write your name" chart. For example, @AriKot27 on January 28th created a meme for Polish, earning over 22,000 likes in two days (seen below left).^[4] On January 29th, @chainsawoctopus_ created a similar meme for Filipino, earning almost 18,000 likes in a day (seen below right).^[5]

Various Examples

External References